Category Archives: Food

How saving the planet causes famine: the climate crisis melts away but global food shortage is legacy of the foolish rush to biofuels.Evidence for dangerous, human-caused global warming was always slim, now it lies cruelly exposed both by a cruel blowback and it’s not just coming from within the science.A far more devastating catastrophe is unfolding and it is entirely the product of the mad rush to biofuels: third world famine. Today a whopping 6.5 percent of the world’s grain has been stripped from the global food supply. That’s the kind of catastrophic cut in food supply that triggers a tipping point so that Third World hunger explodes into mass starvation. Why did it happen?

Kyoto Protocol: The Trigger to Mass Starvation

What mechanism prompted mankind to instigate this genocide of the world’s poor? The Kyoto Protocol. International governments signed up to the idea that biofuels were going to be the better, cleaner, greener source for mankind’s energy needs in a new utopia predicted for us by ‘expert’s inside the United Nations.

Canadian Geophysicist Norm Kalmanovitch is as concerned as many independent scientists at the alarming rate at which this international food crisis is now escalating.

Kalmanovitch is semi-retired now and not in fear of having his scientific career tarnished by blowback from speaking out. He argues that the facts easily demonstrate that the Kyoto Protocol is based entirely on fraudulent science.

Misguided Climate Scientist Primed the Politicians

Honest scientific inquiry serves the single purpose of advancing human knowledge and understanding free of any bias or ulterior motivation and it is clear that promoting “human caused global warming” a full nine years after the world had already started cooling serves no such lofty purpose.

Kalmanovitch accuses a small clique of self-serving climate researchers for violating the fundamental ethics of science protocol and propagating the false science that made the Kyoto Accord the international vehicle for crimes against humanity. Listening to his arguments you cannot help but see he has a point.

So what was the root catalyst for this cataclysm? Astonishingly, you can pin a lot of it on one well-intentioned but misguided do-gooder. His name: Professor James Hansen. Hansen was NASA’s bright-eyed scientist back in 1988. The eager climate modeler appeared before a Congressional Committee and prophesized that mankind would kill the planet if it continued to burn coal and gasoline at modern industrial rates.

Kalmanovich explains, “When you look closely at the climate change issue it is remarkable that the only actual evidence ever cited for a relationship between CO2 emissions and global warming is climate models.”

Hansen made unfounded and highly alarmist claims based on his computer forecasts. He predicted doomsday scenarios that panicked Congress and that wave of fear stampeded the world into believing in a non-existent crisis. Global temperatures have never rocketed as Hansen forecast. In fact all five global temperature datasets show zero net global warming over the past decade in spite of record increases in CO2 emissions from fossil fuels (climate scientists have now grudgingly conceded no statistically significant rise in temperatures has occurred since 1998 from their doomsaying). But once the stampede was launched it caused a rush to biofuels that stripped millions of crop acreage from the world’s food basket.

But more sickening is that many have made sizeable fortunes from trumpeting a short period of warming that lasted from (1975-1998); a vast international array of speculators in wind, solar, wave and biofuels alternatives are onboard the great global warming gravy train.

Hansen’s friends in the infant science of climatology have also fed well off government grants where the ‘climate change’ industry generates tens of billions annually in this self-perpetuating Ponzi scheme that symbiotically melded the interests of speculators with climate researchers.

In effect, those great riches and shining scientific careers were together built upon exploiting a 0.6 C rise in temperatures that all but vanished in the first decade of the 21st Century.

Alternative Scientific Views Now Come to the Fore

But since Hansen’s watershed moment in 1988 the science has moved on and many independent scientists, not on the government grant gravy train, have cast their eyes over the numbers for carbon dioxide (CO2), the prime bogeyman of climate alarmism.

From physical measurement of the Earth’s radiative spectrum impartial eyes saw that the 14.77 micron band of the Earth’s thermal radiation accessed by CO2, is so close to saturation that it is a physical impossibility for any increase in that trace gas to have anywhere near the effect claimed.

Analysts then looked back at the natural warming since the 1830’s that ushered in the end of the Little Ice Age, a time 100 years before any scientist claims humans had impact on the climate. They say natural warming in the order of 0.5°Centigrade per century. We can calculate this to show that the maximum possible effect from CO2 increases is just 0.1°C per century of the claimed 0.6°C per century of the observed temperature increase.

Hansen and his self-serving followers in climatology conveniently chose to ignore such inconvenient truths. Kalmanovich seethes, “They falsely attributed the effect of CO2 to the full 0.6°C and incorporated a range of wavelengths from 7 to 14 microns when CO2 only has an effect over a range from 13.5 to 17 microns and the wavelength band is at least 80 percent saturated. Though never stated explicitly this formed the basis for the CO2 forcing parameter which Hansen used in his earlier climate models and is still used by the IPCC today with the basic formula of 5.35ln(2) = 3.71watts/m2 for a doubling of CO2.”

Like other independent scientists Kalmanovich saw that the fuss all stems from a 1981 paper by Hansen that was peer-reviewed and published in SCIENCE magazine. Here’s where Hansen’s alarmist and skewed climate models captivated scientific literature on the matter. It is by repeated reference to Hansen’s original paper and his 1988 modification of it that the current climate change issue was premised.

Global Warming Fraud Creates Third World Food Crisis

All the other evidence is either of warming or misrepresentations of the greenhouse effect but never of an actual relationship between the two other than a stated correlation stating that CO2 increased and global temperature increased and therefore CO2 caused the global temperature increase.

Kalmanovich’s findings have been corroborated by a group of independent scientists calling themselves the ‘Slayers’ who claim to have refuted the greenhouse gas effect.

They agree that correlation between temperatures and CO2 is easily refuted and they cite the same numbers used by the IPCC in the 2001 report.That report shows cyclic warming and cooling trends that are completely out of step with CO2 emissions as explained by Kalmanovich, “it shows rapid warming from 1910 to 1942 with only a trivial 14 per cent increase in CO2 emissions. That is followed by 33 years of a global cooling trend with a 500 percent increase in CO2 emissions from 1942 to 1975.”

Greenhouse Gas Theory Falls Apart

Kalmanovich argues that is more than enough physical evidence to completely destroy the greenhouse gas theory. But that requires the doomsayers to accept numbers and scientific arguments that they have not yet been prepared to do.

The irony of this travesty is that Hansen himself never claims in absolute terms that CO2 emissions cause global warming. Kalmanovich notes, “Hansen instead uses the output from his climate models to make this claim absolving him of having his statements challenged.”

This technique was masterfully employed by Al Gore in his Inconvenient Truth in which he makes no claims directly but shows out of context snippets of evidence to make the claims for him.

Here is Kalmanovich in-depth reasoning:

The satellite measurements of outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) demonstrate that OLR is responding strictly to the fourth power of the Earth’s absolute temperature in perfect accordance to basic physics theory, but is in no way responding to the 57.1% increase in CO2 emissions from fossil fuels since 1979. This completely refutes the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, which is based on an assumed “enhanced greenhouse effect” from increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but these satellite measurements demonstrate conclusively that this enhanced greenhouse effect from GHG emissions never actually existed!

This single physical observation makes the Kyoto Protocol completely fraudulent, and anyone promoting the concept of CO2 emissions from fossil fuels enhancing the greenhouse effect in support of this fraudulent Kyoto Accord, must be seen as complicit in this fraud.

Kalmanovich then reaches a devastating conclusion:

“This is not a trivial scientific error because over 6.5% of the world’s grain has been removed from the global food supply to serve as feedstock for the 85 billion litres of ethanol produced annually as fuel in accordance with the dictates of this fraudulent UN Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change.”

It is basic food staples that are being removed from the global food supply; the wealthier portion of the world’s 6.6 billion people end up paying substantially more for their food but the poor simply starve, making this Kyoto Accord a true “crime against humanity” and those who have fabricated the false science on which this crime is based are therefore guilty of being complicit in this “crime against humanity”.

Green Energy Promise Just a Pipe Dream

Americans are fast waking up to the harsh reality that this is all pain for no gain. There is stagnation in constructing conventional power generating sources in the wake of large government subsidies to wind and solar power generating facilities. That has dramatically increased power bills but has provided virtually zero additional peak power to consumers.

There is also a huge moral issue in the US. It removes more food from the global food supply than any other country in the manufacture of ethanol for fuel, making Americans key culprit in this crime against humanity. In the United States a staggering 39.7 percent of the world’s ethanol is created from crops that should be used as food.

The new moral question now to be posed is: if the US government was truly looking after the interests of the people then shouldn’t better investment ought to be made in natural gas and coal conversions to liquid fuels? That would bring the price of gas to under $2.50/gal. President Obama could then do away with subsidizing biofuels production, which only serves to raise the price of gas at the pumps and add to world hunger.

Europe views 2011 as a critical year as member countries ramp up their production and use of ethanol to meet the European Union’s Renewable Energy Directive. In this year alone, Europe is expected to produce 5.4 billion liters of ethanol that is a 15 per cent increase over 2010 (see table).

World Ethanol Fuel Production in Million Liters

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

Europe

1,627

1,882

2,814

3,683

4,615

5,467

Africa

0

49

72

108

165

170

Americas

35,625

45,467

60,393

66,368

77,800

79,005

Asia/Pacific

1,940

2,142

2,743

2,888

3,183

4,077

World

39,192

49,540

66,022

73,047

85,763

88,719

Source: F.O. Licht

The Global Renewable Fuels Alliance promotes “biofuels friendly policies internationally and represent over 65 per cent of the global biofuels production from 44 countries.” They predict only growth in this voracious business and if their numbers are correct, a death sentence is being issued on millions more in the future.

World Ethanol Production Forecast 2008-2012 by Country, Millions of Gallons

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

CAGR, %

Brazil

4,988

5,238

5,489

5,739

5,990

2.8%

U.S.

6,198

6,858

7,518

8,178

8,838

5.7%

China

1,075

1,101

1,128

1,154

1,181

1.4%

India

531

551

571

591

611

2.2%

France

285

301

317

333

349

3.2%

Spain

163

184

206

227

249

6.9%

Germany

319

381

444

506

569

9.7%

Canada

230

276

322

368

414

9.9%

Indonesia

76

84

92

100

108

5.6%

Italy

50

53

55

58

60

2.8%

ROW

2,302

2,548

2,794

3,040

3,286

5.7%

World

16,215

17,574

18,934

20,293

21,653

4.6%

(Note that these are imperial gallons and not U.S. gallons. This is why the 2010 value of 18,934 million gallons is 85,763 million liters and not 73,653 million liters as would be calculated for US gallons).

In this mad, bad crazy world western good intentions spawned a crime against humanity; the law of unintended consequences turned the Kyoto Accord into a perverse death sentence to millions. Now we must put an end to this genocide.

Back in October 2010 we posted an article by John O’Sullivan titled “Repugnant Climate Fascists Launch New Video Campaign” showing a violent video of climate skeptics being blown up seen below. Evidence of what those “non-violent” greens and liberals really want to do to everyone who doesn’t subscribe to the dogma of global warming.

Now we get another violent video from a group calling themselves The Food Liberation Army who appear to have no compunction about stealing, kidnapping or beheading Ronald McDonald. I know……. it’s only a statue….no one was really beheaded…..but the way some sick minds work nowadays I’d certainly find no surprise if some overly upset nutcase actually watched this video and then decided to take it upon themself to kidnap a real McDonald’s employee to make their point.

Below are two videos. The first one making their demands and the second one where they carry out their threat and behead poor Ronald.

It doesn’t matter whether they’re saving the planet from climate change or saving us from eating at McDonald’s, many liberals and greens want you to think they’re really nice, but I think these videos show what many of them really want to be doing. I wonder how long before someone really does something violent in the name of climate change or eating properly? More CO2 Insanity and more ecoterror.

OK, you know I’ve been waiting for this one. Fartgate! The malodorous scandal! Just when you thought the warmers couldn’t possibly get any nuttier, we get this one from the Daily Exchange titled “Cows’ Greenhouse Gas Emissions Measured Inaccurately, Study Finds.”

It was bad enough when we found they were trying to measure cow farts, now we find out that they measured the cow farts incorrectly. I’m still trying to get that one past my brain. For some silly reason every time I think about a scientist measuring cow farts I imagine a scientist in a white lab coat sitting on a stool behind a cow and taking in a good whiff every time the cow farts and making notes upon a chart on a clipboard.

Thar she blows!

Actually they use mathematics. Thank GOD those poor scientists don’t have to do that! It would be an udderly ridiculous job indeed!

Mathematical equations used in predicting cows’ methane emissions are inaccurate and need improvement to help dairy farmers mitigate greenhouse gas releases, says a new study by a research team including scientists from the University of Guelph.

The study, co-authored by Canadian and Dutch scientists, appears this month in the journal Global Change Biology.

But wait, it’s not just some scientist like Einstein writing long mathematical formulas on a chalkboard. It seems we have those “computer models” going again, you know, the garbage in garbage out ones where some scientists “conveniently” arrive at a conclusion and then feed in data to ensure the “computer model” arrives at that very same conclusion……

These researchers used data from studies in Canada, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom to assess how well widely used equations predicted methane production. They found that nine equations used in whole farm greenhouse gas models over- or underestimate cows’ methane emissions.

Uh oh! We even have the IPCC in on this, which should tell you the accuracy level probably sucks to say the least…..

For example, the equation currently used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change fails to distinguish the effects of simply feeding cows more from feeding them higher-fat diets. “A higher feed intake will increase methane production. A rise in dietary fat content will decrease methane production,” said Ellis, who has begun a post-doc at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

Well, based upon this information I’d say the proper solution is to get Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the IPCC, give him a lab coat, and let him sit behind cows for the next few years smelling cow farts and trying to ascertain their impact upon non-existent anthropogenic global warming. It certainly couldn’t be any worse than their computer models are.

Remember hearing the harping about the salmon declining due to (what else?) global warming? Well, it appears perhaps we have another crock of global warming BS to flush down the toilet. We had this article in 2007 titled “Salmon and Global Warming” stating…..

From high mountain streams to broad rivers, to estuaries and the ocean, salmon are our “canary in the coalmine,” alerting us to the impact of climate change on the health of our entire ecosystem.

Then we have this one titled “Salmon Decline is a Wakeup Call” from Seattlepi.com, “conveniently” written by Doug Howell, regional executive director of National Wildlife Federation, Western Natural Resource Center, Seattle, stating things such as…..

First, we must curb greenhouse gas emissions; second, we need to invest in solutions such as reconnecting salmon to high headwater habitats and protecting health flows and cool waters in headwater areas to help those species cope with changes already under way.

The need for action is now. Fortunately, the Western Climate Initiative presents us with an unprecedented opportunity to lead the fight against climate change on both fronts.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions alone will not be enough to save salmon in our region. We must also help them cope with a changing climate. The solutions have been identified, but we need elected leaders to provide the proper investments so they can be implemented.

We even had the below video from YouTube about the “endangered” salmon due to “warmer water.” Sounds like they may be pre-cooked when we catch one from now on doesn’t it?

Well I hate to burst your anthropogenic global warming bubble but it all seems to be more scare-a-rama, designed by the warmers to get you all hot and bothered about global warming.

Here’s one from the Western Institute for Study of the Environment titled “Record Salmon Return Explained” about why we have a sudden resurgence of salmon. You can see from the first quote they even set a new record one day on the number of salmon going up the fish ladders at Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River in Oregon. This was posted July 26, 2010.

The Bonneville sockeye counts peaked from June 20-25 when more than 160,000 climbed over the fish ladders. The counts during that period ranged from 25,011 on June 20 to 30,690 on June 24. The latter count is the highest ever, breaking a record set the previous day (30,374).

The record run is “unexpected and hard to explain,” said the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Kathryn Kostow, who also chairs TAC. The committee is made up of federal, state and tribal officials. TAC typically would investigate such “odd events” at season’s end. …

So what’s the deal here? The salmon that were fast disappearing due to global warming are now suddenly returning in record numbers. Mysterious or is there an explanation?

Hard for some people to explain. But the abundantly obvious and evident reason for record salmon runs is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation shift that occurred in 2008, when cool waters replaced warmer waters in the eastern Pacific. Upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water feeds plankton and subsequently the entire food chain, including salmon.

Since mid-August, in a torrent expected to last through early October, sockeye have plunged and leapt up Alaskan streams, massed through the mouth of the mighty Fraser River in Vancouver, and filled Oregon and Washington waterways.

It’s even happening overseas…..

The Columbia River in Oregon has seen “the largest sockeye return since 1938,” he said, while Japan and Russia are enjoying “phenomenal returns.”

It’s also per this article from the Telegraph titled “Record Numbers of Salmon and Trout in British Rivers” happening in the United Kingdom….

More than 15,000 salmon and sea trout have already been recorded migrating this year up the River Tyne – a waterway in which no salmon and trout were seen 50 years ago – the highest number since records began.

Record numbers of sea trout have been recorded in the Thames, a river once declared biologically dead.

They attribute this to cleaning up the rivers, which isn’t a bad thing in my book. Certainly not global warming caused salmon decline though is it?

Yup, sure sounds like global warming is killing off all those salmon. Just another case of “alarmist” bullshit go me. It seems to be if we had that global warming going on we wouldn’t be seeing record salmon runs this year. More CO2 Insanity foisted upon the public by the scaremongers.

It seems someone must have declared an ecoterror jihad. First we have warmers gluing themselves to banks, then we get Greenpeace trying a hostile takeover of an oil drilling rig off the coast of Greenland and now we have a greentard gone mad taking over the Discovery Channel building. If there a full green cheese moon this month or something? Did someone declare an Ecoterror Jihad? Should Homeland Security be checking into the “Eco Taliban?”

It appears to me that what we have going on here could be the forefront of a new wave of warmer desperation and despair because people are not falling for the anthropogenic global warming BS anymore. Are they getting so desperate that violence may become their main path to getting the world to genuflect to the Church of Global Warming? Think about it.

We have Al Gore and others who have admitted defeat on getting cap & trade passed this year in Congress. Obama appears to have stuck his head in the sand on this issue (not to mention others). The Chicago Climate Exchange (trading carbon credits) is imploding as we watch (along with Al Gore’s wallet). The UN has realized that the carbon trading scheme in Europe is about as corrupt as it gets with a $2.7 billion scam. The IPCC has been bitch-slapped by the IAC due to a lot of bad science, fraud, mismanagement and conflicts of interest surrounding their last report in 2007. The UN (justifiably) can’t get anyone to agree on much of anything about global warming or what to do or not to do about it, and the warmers appear to be losing it, perhaps big time.

Today we hit a new low in ecoterror with James J. Lee arming himself and taking over the Discovery Channel building in Silver Spring, Maryland in a desperate effort to have the Discovery Channel do his bidding. You can read his manifesto below, taken from his website Save The Planet Protest. I took a screenshot of this as I don’t expect that link will be working much longer.

Manifesto From James Lee's Website

This is a rather amazing set of demands. We get demands and rantings such as:

“The Discovery Channel and it’s affiliate channels MUST have daily television programs at prime time slots based on Daniel Quinn’s “My Ishmael” pages 207-212 where solutions to save the planet would be done in the same way as the Industrial Revolution was done, by people building on each other’s inventive ideas.”

“Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution.”

“All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions the same way as the Industrial Revolution was done, by people building on each other’s inventive ideas.”

“All programs promoting War and the technology behind those must cease. (Talk about hypocritical thinking).”

“Civilization must be exposed for the filth it is.”

“Programs must be developed to find solutions to stopping ALL immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that.”

“Talk about Malthus and Darwin until it sinks into the stupid people’s brains until they get it!!”

“That means stopping the human race from breeding any more disgusting human babies!”

“Humans are the most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around and are wrecking what’s left of the planet with their false morals and breeding culture.”

Obviously what we have here is a sick mind, perhaps the result of being bombarded with Green bullshit from various sources until he just couldn’t deal with it anymore and went off the deep end. Per CNN this could be a part of where the problem started…..

n a 2006 MySpace posting, Lee wrote: “I finished reading the Daniel Quinn books last month. It started off just as a recommendation from a girl who worked at a coffeehouse.

So who’s Daniel Quinn? Well you can go here and see the website Ishmael.org , see some of what he’s about, and judge for yourself. Obviously he’s an alarmist who likes stirring people like Lee up about things such as over-population, pollution and global warming. To quote from his biography on Wikipedia…..

While response to Ishmael was mostly very positive, Quinn inspired a great deal of controversy with his claim (most explicitly discussed in the appendix section of The Story of B) that since population growth is a function of food supply, sustained food aid to impoverished nations merely puts off and dramatically worsens a massive population-environment crisis. This crisis is born of a disconnect between local humans and the local habitat with its food. Quinn points out that ending this disconnect is a proven way to avoid famines.

I think that explains a lot about where Mr. Lee got some of the ideas put forth in his demands to Discovery Channel regarding overpopulation problems and issues he seems to have with human reproduction. Perhaps he wanted to end a few people’s “disconnect.”

Is this the prototype ecoterrorist? Is this what organizations such as Greenpeace want running about? Ecoterrorst who will shoot or blow up people, companies and organizations who don’t follow their green dogma? Is this what people like Al Gore are creating?

The reason I mention the above is that according to this article from AP…..

At Lee’s trial, The Gazette of Montgomery County reported, Lee said he began working to save the planet after being laid off from his job in San Diego.

He said he was inspired by “Ishmael,” a novel by environmentalist Daniel Quinn, and by former Vice President Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Evidently watching some programs on the Discovery channel also helped create this mindset and his attack on the Discovery Channel itself…..

“The Discovery Channel produces many so-called ‘Environmental Programs’ supposedly there to save the planet,” Lee said in an ad he took out in a Washington newspaper to promote the protest. “But the truth is things are getting WORSE! Their programs are causing more harm than good.”

I’d bet programs like “Whale Wars” didn’t help his mindset either. It wouldn’t be a stretch to surmise this show may have given him some ideas about going on the attack against society. Kind of like monkey see, monkey do. Whaling ship or TV station, what’s the difference to someone like James Lee?

Of course, no one will be prosecuted for putting such thoughts into this man’s mind. Greenpeace will continue harassing whaling ships, Al Gore will perhaps continue harassing masseuses, etc. After all, it’s not their fault the got him so stirred up that he took over the Discovery Channel building and was killed by the police, now is it?

I guess you could term this “Anthropogenic CO2 Insanity.” A term I hope we don’t start using with more frequency. I have to wonder if the “Eco Taliban” aren’t calling for “Eco Jihad” against innocent people. Time will tell.

I just came across this piece from Bloomberg Businessweek titled “New Zealand Farmers Harvest Carbon Credits” that seems to have some nefarious implications about what carbon credits could do to the world’s food supplies.

…a carbon emission trading system that kicked off in July is upending the economics of sheep farming, a once crucial sector of the economy. Sheep farmers are walking away from the business of selling wool and lamb chops and are converting their grazing lands into tree farms that could prove valuable when the country’s agricultural sector is forced to pay for greenhouse gas emissions starting in 2015.

While that may seem “valuable” when it comes to paying for greenhouse gas emissions, it certainly doesn’t seem very valuable as far as the world’s food supply is concerned. According to them it’s not even going to make any difference in their emissions.

Prime Minister John Key’s government in Wellington has said a carbon trading regime probably won’t have a big impact on the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, yet will boost the country’s green credentials and clout in global climate talks.

Seems like some fat egos in New Zealand are more concerned about being stylish on the world scene than being realistic or worrying about what this may do to the food supply in the future. I mean why in the hell would you spend a wad of money for something that isn’t going to do anything? This reminds me of some the scams you see on TV for various “medicines” that aren’t government tested or approved yet come with claims of providing miracles. One would think if there was something out there that would make your wanker grow that some huge drug company like Bayer or Pfizer would have already discovered it and had a patent on it and be raking in billions.

So why would the sheep farmers get all excited about this scheme? Well it seems there are problems in Sheepland such as:

“Although New Zealand was the world’s largest sheep meat exporter last year, the number of sheep have fallen from a 1982 peak of 70 million to about 40 million”

“The government’s carbon program is also a welcome opportunity for some sheep farmers, struggling against slumping wool prices, drought, and competition for land from the dairy and lumber industries”

“Farmers who convert their land from sheep grazing to planting trees could add $172 per acre in value each year to their land holdings”

Think about it. You have less sheep to deal with, which means less feed to buy and less help to pay for and you plant trees that sit there and do nothing and require little if any care, plus you get paid for it. Sounds like a dream come true – get paid for doing basically nothing. But that old adage, ” if it sounds too good to be true it usually is.”

While this may sound good to your friendly neighborhood sheep farmer, it does have other implications on the economy such as “losing jobs once held by shearers, mechanics, and veterinarians.” You can extrapolate that to the shearers, mechanics and veterinarians aren’t going to be spending any money so we will soon have problems with other businesses such as restaurants and stores losing business or even going out of business.

It also isn’t the panacea it’s promised to be, as there are other issues surrounding this:

“farmers are being sold on carbon trading without understanding that they could lose trees to fire or disease”

“the government might cancel the program at any time”

So what we have here is another global warming failure in progress. By the New Zealand’s government’s own admission it’s not going to accomplish much in the way of emissions reductions and it has a lot of potential problems.

Let’s get to the food issue. I see global warming not as a reality but as something that is trendy with the green crowd, a potential maker of billions for people in on the carbon trading schemes, and a killer of jobs and economies due to the increased costs of doing business due to carbon taxes. If that’s not enough we now have the potential to create food shortages.

We now have a foot in the door by paying people not to raise sheep. What next? We pay people to not raise cattle and chickens? Crops such as corn and soybeans are currently being partially diverted from feeding people to making ethanol for cars. How much more will the price of those crops rise if there’s additional shortages created by farmers electing to plant trees instead of grow corn? How much less food will be around because of this?

Think I’m kidding? Just look at the bump in wheat prices due to Russia putting a ban on exporting it due to the recent fires? Imagine if 1/3 of the world’s wheat farmers decided to plant trees and not bother growing wheat anymore? Will there be enough? Will the poor be able to afford it? Will the middle class see their food bills rising to the point that it’s a burden? Here’s a clip from the Washington Post.

Russia announced Thursday that it will ban all grain exports for the rest of the year, sending wheat prices soaring to a two-year high and raising the possibility of inflated food prices that could throw an already fitful global economy recovery off track.

Wheat prices in 2010

You can see from the above chart what the prices have been doing. Below is one effect of price increase and shortages of wheat.

In Egypt — one of the biggest importers of wheat and a nation that experienced deadly violence in bread lines two years ago — the government assured the public that it has a four-month supply of wheat and urged Russia to honor contracts it signed before the ban. In Europe, the United Kingdom’s Premier Foods and Switzerland’s two largest food retailers warned consumers that they may increase prices of products that contain wheat, from crackers to beer.

That Russian wheat is only about 11% of the total world market and yet you can see the actual and easily imagine the potential effects a shortage could have in countries that are dependent upon wheat imports.

So what’s worse? Dying from global warming or food shortages? Sometimes I wonder if there isn’t some other undercurrent going on here that all this is more about population reduction than it is about global warming. Adding the potential of food shortages due to carbon trading schemes just seems to reinforce that idea.